Track: Facilities Planning and Layout

Abstract

Indian Ductile Iron (DI) pipe Industry, being in its nascent stage, focuses to increase the production without thinking productivity. DI Pipe Industry, being Continuous Process Manufacturing with assembly lines operating throughout the year, has started adopting different methodologies like resource Optimization, Lean Manufacturing, and Six Sigma to increase its margins. But amid all these models, the Human Factor and Ergonomics (HFE) has gone somewhat overlooked as most DI Pipe plants are still labour-intensive. Most of these plants have very low levels of automation or almost no automation making them highly dependent on their existing manpower, and this push for higher productivity raises a serious question regarding the safety and well-being of the employees and workers. Hence, this study aims to probe into the HFE factor in the DI Pipe industry to improve the workers' life quality besides production and operation optimization by incorporating the HFE factor into the Value Stream Map (VSM) and creating a sustainable Ergo-VSM tool for the DI Pipe industry.